I made the most beautiful tart yesterday morning. Without a recipe! Mascarpone custard and dried figs poached in tangerine juice with raspberries! I’m very impressed with myself and would like everyone to know.

Now that that pesky holiday baking is out of the way I’m back to printing. I’m way into the type on her forehead here.

Yep, very impressed with myself today.

I am aiming to have the first section of the book finished by Christmas, and all of the printing for the entire project done by the end of January, including endsheets, cover what-nots, etc. I have three weeks off and nothing else on the schedule besides holiday baking and the occasional batch of laundry, so at the moment this seems feasible…I’m used to doing things in bits and pieces over long periods of time, so it’s exciting to try and do it all in one batch.

I have this book that I’ve been carting around since I was little; William the Dragon, by Polly Donnison, who according to the back of the book, is fourteen and has three brothers and an older sister.

It’s about a spoiled dragon adopted by one Lady Wilmount, who has a fantastic flair for fashion.

Though not everyone appreciates it. William likes roast potatoes and jumble sales, and dislikes loud sweaters.

You know how you get attached to books for vague reasons, and only half-remember what happens in them? This is that kind of book. I haven’t looked at it for years and years, but I’ve brought it with me across the country and back, and through three Brooklyn apartments. Is it the sweater?

I started printing the book!

Finally!

I’m starting with what’s probably the most complicated spread, in the hopes that the rest will be like going downhill.

So far so good.

In other news, I have three bags of apples and no sugar in the house.

Be one of the founding contributors to The Sketchbook Library by signing up to receive a sketchbook, filling it up with art, and sending it back.

I signed up a few weeks ago for this project:

Sketchbooks offers a glimpse into an artist’s life, which is why we want to make a publicly accessible library of sketchbooks that people can browse, peruse, and check out. We think that this sketchbook collection has the potential to open a new line of communication between the artist and the viewer, since the experience of making and viewing are both so personal. Anyone can sign up to receive a sketchbook. Before joining our permanent collection, sketchbooks will be exhibited at select galleries across the US.

It’s organized by a group in Atlanta called Art House Co-op- they’ve got a series of projects going on, and they’ve been doing the this particular one for a few years now. I really like that they plan on exhibiting them as a library; and that they have a site with archived submitted images from the participating artists : http://arthousecoop.com/submissions

The deadline to signup to participate is this Sunday, November 1st. (Warning- There is an entry fee).

I’m at this in-between point, where I’ve got a lot of material but I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

I’ve got a handful of blocks to carve, and type to set, and colors to choose.

I know what the text will say, but I’m not sure how, and in what way.

But I have a lot a pictures like this, and I like them. There’s still a lot more to do.

is like a picture of a sunny day.

I’m having Sleater-Kinney nostalgia this weekend. 

At some point I’m going to have a lot of choices to make with this. Page size? Maybe bigger than I thought? It’s nothing like figure skating, really. I’m going to have to choose actual colors and stick with them. Paginate. Structure. At this point, though, it’s sort of up in the air. I think I really will have all the blocks carved by the end of the summer, which means setting the type and printing the edition in the fall and binding over the December break.  

is next weekend at the Brooklyn Lyceum, June 27th and 28th. From their website:

The mission of the NYC Zine Fest is to circulate and promote independent, homemade, self-published, and small publications. We aim to support and expand the network of creators who self-publish zines in and outside of the NYC metro area.  The Fest will connect artists, writers, and collectors of zines and  further the NYC zine community through a two-day annual series of events, including tabling, workshops, presentations and parties. The NYC Zine Fest ’09 will celebrate and highlight the spirit of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture that zines represent.

I’m trying to arrange for a sitter for my non-profit so I can help out at the binding demonstration we’ll be doing in the afternoon.  Hope I can make it down there, it looks like a great time.

“…the very categories of language are created by intentional hand actions, so that verbs derive from hand movements, nouns ‘hold’ things as names, and adverbs and adjectives, like hand tools, modify movement and objects.”

The Craftsman-Richard Sennett

Progress is being made on at least one front. 

1. My boss thinks “technologyogical” is a word.

2. that Richard Sennett thinks:

…commitments themselves come in two forms, as decisions and as obligations. In the one, we judge whether a particular action is worth doing or a particular person is worth spending time with; in the other, we submit to a duty, a custom, or to another person’s need, not of our own making. Rhythm organized the second kind of commitment; we learn how to perform a duty again and again. 

(The Craftsman)

I hate name tags, just so you know. I like to be incognito. 

We went to the Hybrid Book Conference and Book fair in Philadelphia on Thursday. It’s always nice to get out of town, and despite the lousy weather it was a good time. Book arts conferences seem to be happening constantly these days, and this one seemed well-organized. I liked that the organizers planned for talks in the morning and a book fair in the afternoon- most of the time at these kinds of events both happen simultaneously, which means if you have a table you end up missing half the event, and the talks aren’t as full as they could be, and the book fair has long lulls where there’s no one there. 

Sitting at a table renders me inarticulate. There’s a lot of sitting and staring, and smiling vaguely at people. There’s usually some fluorescent lighting involved. It’s all a little exhausting. The good part comes if you are lucky enough to have someone with you to watch the table while you walk around and look at other people’s books. I don’t really think that standing at a table is the best way for me to absorb a book; I generally get overwhelmed fairly quickly, but since it’s one of those rare occasions when you can handle lots of artists books and talk to the people who made them, it is a great opportunity to see a lot of work in a short period of time.

Highlights for me included:

1. A new book by Katie Baldwin, Treasure, which she produced in residence at the Women’s Studio Workshop. 

2. Sarah Bryant’s work, which I’ve seen before in images but not in person. It seems she’s been very productive up there at Wells College. I really liked Point of View.

3. Two new books by Macy Chadwick, The Topography of Home, and Letter by Letter. 

4. Lots of fantastically great stuff by Gregory Pizzoli-why isn’t there more of this kind of work at book arts fairs? Is humor a bad thing? 

5. The ongoing recruiting efforts of Impractical Labor. 

6. A great presentation by the Combat Paper Project, followed by a great presentation by Amos Kennedy, reminding us all of the world going on outside the academic institution.

7. Patty Smith talking about gender and offset printing.

I think though, that the main highlight of the conference was the Malaysian food we had for dinner on Friday night. 

You like how I took more pictures of food than I did of books?

Big thanks to Josh Harris for putting my cohort Corinna Z. (see above) and I up for two nights in his glorious renovated home. Apparently artists can become homeowners outside of NYC.